


Edelweiss

by kayura_sanada



Category: Naruto
Genre: And No Boruto Is Not A Real Thing, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Just Horrible Fanfiction, Love Confessions, M/M, Naruto and Gaara Are Both Saps, Post-Canon, Romance, The meaning of flowers, WAFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 20:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14221044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: Gaara comes back from a long day at work to find someone’s messed with the things on his coffee table.





	Edelweiss

Gaara opened the door to his home and stepped inside just as the desert sun slunk below the deep horizon. The sky was awash in lines of red within the purple darkness. Gaara closed his door on it without giving it a single glance.

He pulled his hat off from his head. As usual, it had left his hair a rioting mass beneath its wide brim. He shook his hair out as he placed the hat on a hook beside the door. He sighed. He’d stayed late, later than his siblings would usually allow him. Usually he could see inside by the evening light, but tonight it was too dark. He toed off his shoes by feel, then spent a second flicking on the light switch before stepping past the small foyer.

His home opened up into a wide space. Right before the door was his living room; to its left was the kitchen, which opened into the dining area. A hallway on his right led to the bedrooms and the bath.

Because of that, his gaze centered on the sofa bisecting the room, then on the coffee table in front of it. He knew very well he’d left reports on that table, along with a pen and a few scrolls. Now, all of that was missing. One of the cacti from his windowsill sat instead in the middle of the coffee table. He picked it up. A tiny white card sat on top of its pot. ‘Hi, Gaara!’ it read. ‘Hope you had fun at work today! We missed you!’ A smiley face ended the note. Gaara smiled. He knew very well who would have made that ridiculous note; it seemed his visitor had arrived, after all.

He shook his head. He placed the card on the coffee table and put the cacti back in its spot on his windowsill. Though he searched beyond his window for a moment, he couldn’t see a sign of anyone around. Had Naruto arrived only a short while ago and come here to find him, only to see Gaara hadn’t yet returned? Had the newly appointed hokage then gone to see him in his office, thus just barely missing Gaara as he returned home? For a moment, he considered heading back. But if he did and Naruto came back _here_ , they would simply miss each other all over again. Best to wait. Knowing Naruto, he wouldn’t be content to rest in a guest room when he could instead barge in on Gaara in the middle of the evening.

Decided, he shrugged off his kage robe and draped it over the back of the couch before heading over to the kitchen counter in search of a snack. He should cook, too, since he would be receiving a guest soon.

Another cacti sat on his counter, right in the middle between the sink and the fridge. He smiled again. Clearly Naruto had had more time than he’d thought. Gaara should have returned home sooner.

The card this time was thick, and nearly slid off when Gaara lifted the pot. His sand saved it. As he lifted it, he saw how small the print was, scribbled into every corner of the card. He cocked a brow at the sight.

He took the card from his sand and leaned against the countertop to read. Unlike the first, this one was written from Naruto’s perspective. He managed about two lines in before he was standing straight, his small smile sliding from his face.

‘Gaara. I have a question for you, but I’m scared of your answer. Isn’t that sad? After everything that’s happened, this is the scariest thing.’

The words hurt. He never would have thought that Naruto was afraid of him or what he thought. Naruto had to know Gaara held him in the highest esteem. So what could Naruto want to ask that left him so scared he resorted to these sorts of tactics?

‘If your answer is no, don’t say anything. Unless you need to talk about it, then okay. But if not, maybe we could just pretend this never happened?’

Gaara read the card again and again, but no matter how often he did, it still failed to make sense. Whatever Naruto wanted to ask him, it had to be something personal, didn’t it? Naruto usually had no problem asking Gaara for a favor, or for his opinion on something that had to do with their jobs as kage of their nations. He trusted Gaara enough to joke, worry, protect, fight with. So what was this, and why hadn’t Gaara caught any hint of it all the times he’d met up with Naruto?

He put the card beside the plant. The words on it blended together as his mind whirled. It took him a moment to think of what his normal schedule was when he returned home, knowing Naruto had visited enough times to memorize it.

Snack. Right.

He turned to his fridge, a new sort of unease spiking in his stomach. Naruto wouldn’t put a cacti in the refrigerator, would he?

Gaara opened the fridge, ready to find one of his beloved plants dying for the sake of whatever misplaced fear Naruto had, only to find an ugly white flower perched in a plastic green pot, clearly bought solely for this moment. Gaara quickly pulled it out, careful to grab the card stuffed into the soil before it could fall. The flower was one suited to the mountains; its five long petals were covered in fuzz, all the better to survive the cold mountain winds. It didn’t belong in a desert. Gaara gave it some water, then placed it back in his fridge. He would come up with a better solution later.

The card had the same black ink on it, Naruto’s handwriting plain against the white background. For the first time, Gaara realized Naruto must have asked for extra cards when he’d bought the flower; they were thick and blank, the parchment similar to cards he’d seen when buying his own cacti. He touched the edge. Sharp enough to leave a papercut. His fingers trembled a bit as he read.

‘It’s too cold in here for cacti! :(’

It startled a huff of a laugh out of him. “It’s too cold and dark for the one you chose, Naruto!” he said under his breath. Still, it gave him hope to see Naruto making another joke. Naruto had started a new line just below that one, having likely run out of extra cards. If that was the case, then this was the one. Whatever tormented him, Naruto would have admitted it on this card.

‘This flower is the edelweiss – my favorite flower. It means “daring and noble courage.”’ Gaara’s brows rose; he hadn’t known Naruto to be the type to know that sort of thing. Yet now, reading the meaning of the flower, it made perfect sense, somehow. ‘I’m trying to be courageous. But…’

The rest of the script was small, almost too small to read. He was surprised to see the next line had been crossed out.

̶'̶I̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶.̶'̶

Gaara blinked. Had he misread? Below that, in smaller script, was the corrected version. His breath caught.

‘I love you.’

And then, beneath that, so small he almost couldn’t read it:

‘Do you love me?’

He stared. The card trembled in his hand. It dropped to the floor as he turned.

He ran.

He ran all the way to the mansion, his sand finally wrapping around him enough to launch him forward. The people remaining on the road after dark made way for him, several calling out his name and asking what was wrong. He heeded them no mind.

The world spun around him, blurred into meaninglessness. He arrived at the kage mansion and raced inside. Kankurou had already left; Temari was in Konoha. He flew up the building, his sand retracting back into his gourd as he hurried to his office, where Naruto would have gone to be formally greeted after entering the country – which would have happened to begin with unless he’d run into someone he knew – someone like Kankurou, who hadn’t argued once despite how late Gaara had stayed, waiting…

His office, whose lights were still on despite Gaara clearly remembering turning them off when he’d left…

He burst into the room. The doors flung so wide they bounced off the walls. Naruto, sitting in a chair in front of Gaara’s empty desk with his head hung low, jumped to his feet. He scratched the back of his head with his left hand and chuckled. “H-Hey, Gaara! Ah, how are you–”

Gaara stormed up to him. Naruto paled. “Ah, wait, G-Gaara…” He held out his hand. Gaara grabbed it and yanked it out to Naruto’s side. Naruto tried to back away, but Gaara just used his grip to pull him closer, instead. “U-Um, listen–”

Naruto was just tall enough that Gaara had to lean up on his tip-toes to reach his lips. He caught Naruto with his mouth half-open, trying to finish some half-baked excuse. He opened his own mouth wider, until he could catch those wayward lips with his own. He felt Naruto’s breath stop. “Yes,” he said, then, before either of them could do more than marvel at the feel of their lips brushing against one another, “yes. _Yes._ I love you, Uzumaki Naruto. _”_

He felt Naruto’s grin against his lips. Against his tongue. Naruto made some ungodly noise in the back of his throat and wrapped his arm around Gaara. “Really?” he asked, voice giddy.

“Really.” He smiled. Naruto squealed. _Squealed_. The hug became crushing.

Gaara returned it full force.

“For how long?” Naruto whispered.

“Do you know the meaning of cacti?” Against his cheek, Naruto nodded. “For that long,” he murmured, and watched Naruto’s eyes widen.

“Oh.”

He crooked his finger. “I believe we were in the middle of something.”

Naruto laughed. Gaara yanked him forward, eagerly tasting it on his tongue. They stayed like that for some time.


End file.
